He laughed. “I’d better get off the phone and let your husband take care of you.”
With that he was gone. Olivia lay awake a while longer, waiting for the phone to ring a second time, but it never did.
Paul didn’t call the following day either. She wondered if he might have lost her number at the ER, but even if he had, it wouldn’t be that difficult to track her down. By late afternoon she was certain his machine had somehow eaten her message and she left another. Then she tried his office.
“He’s not in today,” the receptionist said. “He took it as a personal day.”
When seven o’clock came with still no word from Paul, she drove over to Alec’s.
“Maybe he had to go out of town?” Alec suggested. He was sitting at his desk, sorting slides of the lighthouse for a presentation he needed to make the following week, while Olivia studied the directions for the soldering iron resting on the work table.
“That must be it,” she said.
“Hi, Olivia.”
Olivia turned to see Lacey in the doorway. She wore short denim shorts and a tank top that hugged her small breasts and exposed her midriff.
“Hi, Lacey. How did you do on your biology homework?”
“I got an A. Or I guess
“Not true,” Olivia said. “You did the work yourself. I just got you pointed in the right direction.”
“I’m going out.” Lacey looked at her father.
Alec glanced up from his slides. “Have fun,” he said.
Lacey turned to leave the room, the denim snug across her small, rounded bottom.
“What time does she need to be in?” Olivia asked, when she heard Lacey close the front door behind her.
Alec shrugged. “When she stops having fun.”
Olivia stared at him. “What if that’s five in the morning?”
Alec turned around at the challenge in her tone. “It won’t be. She rarely pushes her limits.”
“But how do you know she’s okay? I mean, how do you know when to start worrying?”
“Haven’t we had this discussion before?” he asked. “Lacey’s learning to make her own choices and take responsibility for her own actions.”
“Is that Alec talking or Annie?” Olivia knew by his stunned expression that she’d taken the debate one step too far. She sighed. “I’m sorry, Alec. It’s really none of my business.”
He stood up and pulled a book from the shelf by the window, and he touched Olivia’s shoulder lightly before sitting down again. “It’s all right,” he said. “You don’t understand. I think it’s impossible for anyone who didn’t know Annie to understand.”
It was slow in the ER the next day and Olivia spent much of the morning obsessively checking her answering machine at home, but there were no calls from Paul. She tried his work number again, and this time the receptionist told her he’d called in sick. She called his home, beginning to worry. There was no answer, but there was little she could do about it until she got out of work.
She had just finished stitching the eyebrow of a hang gliding novice when Kathy told her there was a girl in the waiting room who was asking to see her. Olivia walked into the reception area to see Lacey leaning against the waiting room wall, thumbing through a magazine.
“Lacey?”
Lacey looked up at her and stood at attention, her arms stretched out to the sides. “See?” She grinned. “I’m alive and well. Dad said you were worried about me going out last night, so I thought I’d stop by and show you I’m still in one piece.”
Olivia smiled. “How did you get here?”
“Bicycle.”
“Where’s your helmet?”
Lacey rolled her eyes. “God. You’re, like, obsessed with this safety stuff. Chill out.”
Olivia opened the door between the waiting room and the reception area. “Come in,” she said. “Would you like some coffee?”
“Coffee?” Lacey followed her into the hall. “I’m fourteen, Olivia. Aren’t you afraid it’ll, like, stunt my growth or something?”
Olivia led Lacey into her office, where she poured them each a cup of coffee and closed the door.
“So,” she asked as she watched Lacey empty three packets of sugar into her cup, “did you have fun last night?”
Lacey shrugged and took a sip of her coffee. “I guess.”
“What time did you get in?”
“I don’t know.” She held up her left arm. “I don’t own a watch. My mother didn’t believe in them.”
“How can someone not believe in watches?”
“You didn’t know my mother.”
